


Make Him Better

by idrilhadhafang



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angry Kylo Ren, Angry Poe Dameron, Character Bashing, Evil Snoke, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Backstory, Kylo Ren Being a Little Shit, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Throws A Tantrum, Luke Skywalker bashing, M/M, Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Mutual Pining, POV Kylo Ren, Past Torture, Pining Kylo Ren, Pining Poe Dameron, Post-Star Wars: Episode IX, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Protective Poe Dameron, Resistance Leader Poe Dameron, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Torture, Tortured Ben Solo, attempted self-harm, prisoner kylo ren, well ex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 18:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15913449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Long after the end of the war, Poe Dameron pays Kylo Ren a visit to his cell. This becomes a pattern.





	1. Visit One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Taunt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14360268) by [cuddlesome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome). 



> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: Title semi-paraphrased from a lyric from Evanescence’s “All That I’m Living For”.

Inside the prison cell, Kylo Ren has no other company but his own thoughts, and he realizes that he really has no one else to blame but himself. Not Skywalker — the monster — or Snoke — the foul creature — but himself. 

Himself. 

He did this. True, Skywalker had tried to kill him, but the rest of it...

A hand passes a plate of truly unappetizing gruel through the bars. He pushes it away; he just isn’t hungry. Hungry isn’t exactly on his list of worries. 

“So the former Supreme Leader thinks he’s too good to eat prison food?” The guard’s a young woman, probably not that much older than Rey when you really look at her, and Kylo may be surrounded by ysalamiri, but he knows hatred when he sees it. Hatred, and more than that, genuine grief. 

Kylo meets her glare. “I’d rather starve than eat anything you Resistance vermin serve up as _slop_.”

”Charming,” the young woman mutters sarcastically. “Be my guest, Supreme Leader. Don’t come crying to me if you don’t have anything to eat.” A beat. “You know, before you act like the victim, maybe you can think about the people you hurt. Revolutionary, isn’t it?”

Kylo’s gaze doesn’t waver. He doesn’t hate this girl; she’s a nobody. Just someone assigned to his cell to watch him. He hates Skywalker, hates the General, hates almost everyone but most of all hates himself. 

He. He did this. All of it. Without company, without the bond with Rey (which she closed off for good, he knows, when she entered the Falcon on Crait. Snoke’s death weakened it, Rey ended it), Kylo has only his thoughts for company.

They’re not pleasant thoughts. Then again, the thoughts in his head are like monsters in and of themselves; they’re far from pleasant. 

The girl has to go, thank goodness — Alia, her name apparently is. Farewell, Alia — you were nothing more than a nuisance. 

Kylo takes the plate and smashes it against the wall. It’s satisfying seeing the slop hit the wall; if not for the fact it shatters into so many pieces, he’d wonder if he’d have the satisfaction of doing it again, like he did with his mask. 

He takes a fragile shard. Shattered transparisteel — waste of a good transparisteel plate, actually. He takes the shard, holding the point of it against his skin. He wonders, if he made an incision in his skin, if he would —

Footsteps. For a moment, Kylo wonders if it’s Alia back again, but then he sees a familiar face. It’s Poe Dameron, and he looks a little tired, but nonetheless determined. He doesn’t look shaky, though; it’s like his nerves are durasteel. He’s brave. Kylo was never brave. Maybe that’s why Snoke preyed on him; he wasn’t strong enough...

”Ben.” Poe’s voice is pretty level, all things considered. At least that solves the who-talks-first issue. “Put the shard down. You don’t want to hurt anybody.”

”I’m not thinking of hurting you.”

Poe’s eyes glide from Kylo to the shard in his hand. “You’re not hurting yourself either.” A beat. “Do you really need this, Ben?”

So the Resistance can’t even grant him that. 

“My name’s not Ben.”

”It was your name,” Poe says. “I know it.”

“That was a long time ago.”

Poe closes his eyes and sighs. “Fine. Kylo. Supreme Leader. Whatever you want to call yourself. I just want you to put the damn thing down.”

”Or?” Challenging. 

“You could hit something pretty valuable,” Poe says. “Kylo, Supreme Leader, Lord Ren, whatever you insist on calling yourself, do you really want to hurt yourself?”

Kylo meets his eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He shouldn’t be lashing out at Poe, but the caged, injured nexu inside him does not want to put that shard down. 

“Kylo Ren,” Poe said, “You are a monster for what you’ve done. I’m gonna admit, if you were a stranger, it would be easy to hate you. But it’s not quite like that.” 

“You should.”

Poe meets his gaze without flinching. “I knew you. And I...” He trails off. 

 Kylo waits, his breath hitching. He wonders what exactly Poe is going to say. Even if he didn’t have the ysalamiri surrounding him, reading Poe’s mind wouldn’t be satisfying enough. He wants Poe to outright say it.

”You were my friend. Maybe my best friend.” Poe takes a deep breath. “And you just left me without any sort of explanation. You come back, you’re someone else. What happened out there?”

Kylo doubts he knows where to begin. He can still see Snoke’s sneering face as he all but unmade Ben Solo’s mind, and he doubts he can put words to the experience.

He  swallows. “It doesn’t matter.” A beat. “Are you going to torture me?”

”We’re not you,” Poe says, and Kylo feels a sort of twinge of anger. Of course Poe Dameron is “purer” than he is, of course he’s essentially broken. 

“Then I guess you can go on and brag to everyone else about how superior you are,” Kylo says. “I have to wonder, Poe — how long can you ignore the blood on your hands?”

”That was different.”

”And I’m sure you tell yourself that every night so you can sleep.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” Poe says. “What I’ve done. What I’ve seen.”

Poe has to leave, of course, and he seems relieved, if nothing else. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and there’s an undercurrent of something else. _Let me know when you’ve come to your senses._

Kylo doubts that he can, or wants to. 


	2. Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth is out. Well, a part of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

  _He’s lifted into the air on the Supremacy, and he feels somehow, like lightning has shot through his body, like his body has exploded in pure white pain, even as Snoke looks at him with something resembling a sort of longing._

_“Give me...everything...” he rumbles, and Ben can feel his mind being all but shredded apart, memories being pulled out at random. Including with Poe. Poe, vibrant, bright, brave Poe, who he could never truly have..._

_”Touching,” Snoke says, wryly. “Was it true love, young Solo? I have to wonder.”_

_Ben’s gritting his teeth, tears running down his cheeks. For what happened, and how his heart is effectively broken._

Kylo Ren all but springs awake in his cell in that moment, looking around and realizing that he’s not on Snoke’s ship, he’s not with Snoke (logically, because Snoke’s dead, Kylo killed him himself), he’s...

Still not safe. 

He can still hear traces of conversation down the hallway. Things like Poe saying to Alia that yes, he can handle this, he’s not scared of Kylo. And what’s there to be scared of? Kylo’s position is effectively stripped from him, he’s a sorry mess. He’s pathetic. 

“If he tries anything — ’’ 

“I appreciate your concern, Alia,” Poe says. “But I’ll be all right.”

Alia withdraws, if reluctantly, and Poe goes over to Kylo’s cell. 

“I heard you screaming,” Poe said. “Across the hall.” He himself looks like he hasn’t slept well. “Are you all right?”

“None of your business, that’s what,” Kylo says. 

Poe sighs. “You think I like seeing you in pain? Of course I don’t.”

He looks so sincere in that moment that Kylo can believe him. And he wishes that Poe wouldn’t look at him like that; he doesn’t deserve any of this. Poe has no idea what else he did, all in Snoke’s name. 

“Why do you care?” Kylo says. 

“You were my friend once. And...I don’t forgive you for what you did. But I don’t hate you. Entirely, that is.”

”Reassuring,” Kylo says wryly. 

Poe’s lips twitch a little, like even despite himself, he can’t help but find it a little funny. Then it fades as quickly as it comes. “Kylo...whatever you want me to call you...what happened the night you destroyed Luke’s temple?”

”The girl didn’t tell you?”

”Not really,” Poe says. “And I know you went to see me before you...left, but I don’t know what else happened.”

Kylo remembers. Remembers everything. Stumbling from the wreckage of the hut, confused and badly scraped and grieving — he wasn’t quite frightened, but grieving. He’d always known his uncle had hated him but he never expected something like this. So he ran. Ran so far, and when the Jedi betrayed him too (save for some), he’d set the Temple aflame after he’d killed them. That had been one of the worst parts, his first blood, and he couldn’t say it entirely got easier after that. Simultaneously getting easier and not getting easier at the same time, because there was still a frightened boy in there who’d vomited after his first kill, pulling at him. 

Kylo sighs. “Your hero, Luke Skywalker, tried to kill me. I’m sure if he was alive, he’d try to make it look like I attacked first, but he was always a lying snake.”

Poe looks like he’s been hit by a runaway speeder. “He — ’’

”Would never? I saw him. Standing above me, holding a lightsaber. Because he was too much of a coward to face me in a duel like a proper Jedi would. And for what?” 

“He wouldn’t...would he?” Poe runs a hand through his hair. “I...need some time to think about this, Kylo. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have protected you.”

”You didn’t have anything to do with this. Besides...” Kylo pauses. “You were always made to be the hero.”

”You could have been too.”

Poe has to leave, again, but Kylo swears that that comment, that simple you-could-have-been-the-hero, lingers in his ears, his heart, his head, long after Poe leaves. 


End file.
